Zeke and Isaac settled on the chestnut wooden pews in the front row of the nave. They had a clear view of the altar, its most notable feature being a beautiful stained glass window depicting a Latin cross.
“Your body is emanating an abundant amount of magic,” Isaac said. “Either you used magic on yourself, or someone did on you. I don’t sense any curses on you, so it must’ve been healing magic.” Isaac continued, “Who did you have a confrontation with, Hezekiah?”
Zeke sat silently for a few seconds and then shifted in his seat. “Violet,” he said. “You know she’s a part of the Tainted Generation, too, right?”
“Of course I do,” Isaac said. “May I ask for the reason for the scuffle?”
“She… assaulted me… and then healed me,” Zeke said. “Because I’m weak.”
“She said that?” Isaac lamented. “How dare she… no member of the Tainted Generation is weak.”
“She was right, though. I barely defended myself or fought like a man. With or without magic, I was useless.”
Isaac put his hand on Zeke’s head. “You are not useless.”
Wearing a dejected look, Zeke turned to Isaac. “So, you know about Ugo, too.”
Isaac withdrew his hand. “Yes. I’ve known about Violet being Tainted since, well, her Pores opened three years ago, and I sensed when you and Ugo blossomed.”
Zeke winced. “Don’t say ‘blossomed,’ please. It sounds weird.”
“Mana Pores opening up sounds weird, too,” Isaac said.
“Who names this stuff?”
“Someone who lacks creativity and self-awareness, I presume….” Isaac looked around and then locked his eyes on the stained glass, which kept him in serenity. It was noticeable in his expression. “You know, use cloaking spells. Walking around with your body emitting all that magical energy is dangerous.”
“I don’t know how to use magic.”
“Cloaking spells are Gray Magic. Even people with little Mana affinity can use it.” Isaac laughed. “Anyway, for people like us, it’s easy, but if you put mental limiters on yourself like that, then the opposite can be true. It’s all in the power of the mind.”
“Well, then I’m screwed.” Zeke clasped his hands together and slumped forward, eyeing the white marble floor. “My mother has no chance….”
Isaac shot a look at Zeke. “Your mother?”
“An angel… did something to my mom. He cursed her.”
“Violet wasn’t of avail?” Isaac paused. “Oh, I see how the fight started now….”
“My mom won’t stop laughing and is slowly turning into stone,” he said with a quaver.
“Ah, yes,” Isaac said, touching his chin. “That explains her behavior during the funeral. I knew I sensed something abnormally pure in her...”
“You sensed it?” Zeke asked. “Does that mean you know what she has?”
“What does she have, Isaac!”
“Encephoria.”
“Like… encephalitis?” Zeke asked. “A brain infection?”
“It is caused by a being called ‘Euphorous.’ It’s a Minor Angel.”
“Like a Minor Demon… a microorganism. It’s a virus, right?”
“That would help you understand, right? Yes, it is a virus, very tiny,” Isaac said. “Humans, when in the presence of angels, well, regular Major Angels, are filled with hope and joy. This is caused by the Euphorouses that these angels emanate naturally, either from their true form or from their Containers. It seeps into the brain and makes happiness.”
“Like dopamine.”
“Yes. Usually, it’s easy to have barrier spells put up to avoid an infestation, and for people like us we don’t even do it consciously. However, normal humans aren’t so lucky. When in excess, they force humans into the condition your mother is in now, with slight variations from time to time. The excessiveness of Euphorouses populating the human brain is the prime cause of radical devotees we’ve seen throughout mankind’s history.”
Zeke wondered if a choir of tiny angelic assholes were actually the ones that killed Martin Luther instead of a cardiac infarct. “Wait, so angels just have these things in their bodies at all times?”
“They help them access certain magic and optimize their health.”
The slew of new information had Zeke’s ever-noisy brain sifting through it, making him pause for nearly a minute. “Can these things multiply on their own?”
“Yes,” Isaac said.
“It sounds more like bacteria than a virus. Viruses can’t survive without infecting a host, nor multiply, and their only function is mostly making disease.”
“Whatever helps you understand better, Hezekiah. Bacteria, then.”
“How do we treat it? Is there, like, a… magical antibiotic or something?”
“No need. I don’t even need to examine Eldora. I know how to fix it. There aren’t many other ailments similar to that one. Giving her frequent trips to our church, I am positive that she has that ailment.”
“So, how do we treat it?”
“What ideas do you have?”
“Antibiotics and corticosteroids for inflammation are all I can come up with. As for the paranormal answer… can we send a demonic virus into her brain to eat the thing?”
Isaac’s expression lit up. “Interesting idea.” He looked up as he explained, “That’s a possible solution, but the number of things that could go wrong is staggering. Letting a Minor Demon roam in your mother’s brain could be fatal and lead to a possession that, even after an exorcism, could leave behind permanent damage.” Isaac looked back at Zeke. “A more plausible solution would be to use a synthesized... virus, but training and grooming it to our liking to follow our instructions exactly could take months, and your mother doesn’t have that much time left.”
Zeke gasped, picturing something in his head about his mother he never wanted to again. “Then, what can we do?”
Silence took over.
Isaac was the first to break it. “There is something that can save her,” he said. “I will need you to pay attention and follow me on this, okay?”
“Okay, just explain,” Zeke said and leaned back onto the pew, keeping his eyes fixed on Isaac.
“The Puritas Flor is a special flower that angels consume to suppress their power, taken in large amounts, and can block an angel’s power entirely for a certain amount of time. They use them sometimes when transferring their soul to a new Container so that it doesn’t rupture immediately. Some angels are just that powerful. Some even eat the flower when in their true form to mend with their overwhelming power to keep themselves from self-destructing. This is a major secret among angels.”
Zeke raised a brow and felt genuine fear when a question popped into his head he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to. “How did you learn about this?” he asked in a quiet voice as if they were a pair of burglars in trespassed territory.
“My Healer’s Garb told me. Can’t you hear the voice of yours?”
All Zeke responded with was an increasingly chagrined expression.
“So…” Zeke started. “These suppressants being capable of shutting off an angel’s power means they kill their angelic cells.”
“‘Angelic cells?’” Laughter burst out of Isaac. “You sound like the others. Amazing. Yes, the flower is toxic to all the Minor Angels that grant Major Angels their power, but the angels recover these beings quickly and regain their power.”
“Because it’s their physiological function, but my mother isn’t an angel, so if she eats that flower, the Minor Angels die and won’t return.”
“That’s correct, Hezekiah,” Isaac said. “Now, here comes the little adversity. These flowers are only found in Heaven.”
Zeke paused. Did he just say ‘Heaven’? he studied Isaac. “That’s a ‘little adversity’?” he said.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“We don’t need to access that Heaven, just the other Heaven in Heaven.”
Zeke’s face creased in confusion.
And Isaac explained what he meant and his plan to him.
----------------------------------------
Zeke rushed into the occult library. He found Ugo and AJ rifling through the pages of the tattered books. The pile of supernatural literature was still as tall as he had left it; they barely put a dent in it, yet a copious amount littered the floor.
Ugo and AJ stood up after noticing his arrival. Zeke stopped them before they could protest by starting to retell his encounter with Isaac and surreptitiously leaving out his confrontation with Violet.
Once he had finished, his audience of two stared back with the blank, unblinking faces of newborn kittens. “A Sub-Realm of Heaven?” Ugo said incredulously.
“That’s crazy,” AJ added.
Zeke prepared himself to re-explain the complex concept, hopefully not as convoluted as Isaac. He used plenty of hand gestures to explain, “The notion we have of Heaven is not correct. Heaven is much, much, much, much larger than any number a human could fathom. Heaven is millions upon millions upon millions of worlds organized into subdivisions.”
The sight of his friends’ eyes glazing over, giving up on trying to understand the nonsense spilling from his mouth, had Zeke resort to something he was more comfortable explaining. He rolled up his sleeve, raised his arm, and pinched his tanned skin. “The skin has layers, right? Our universe is composed similarly. Three layers: the epidermis, the outer layer we can see; under it, we can find the dermis, which is the thickest layer; and under that, is the subcutaneous fat.” Zeke let go of the skin and opted to use his hands again. “Our universe is split into three layers. The subcutaneous fat, the bottom layer, is where we can find the Netherworld and all of its Realms, as well as Realms belonging to magical beings. The Human Realm, the dermis, where we live and is in a way the most important of them all, and then at the top we have Heaven, the epidermis, that umbrellas the rest of the universe.”
Zeke smiled proudly at his analogy.
AJ raised a hand. “Aren’t there like ten layers of skin?”
Zeke’s smile went away. “Not all analogies can be perfect, AJ, okay!”
Then Ugo joined in. “And when you say Heaven is the epidermis, you mean it’s the outer layer everyone can see? But Heaven isn’t visible to everybody—”
“No, I meant...” Zeke groaned as he ruffled his curly hair and continued, “Heaven is composed of many Realms. Only several Realms are what humans go to after death. That’s the Heaven we usually refer to. The rest of the Heavenly Realms are where the angels spend most of their time taking care of universal affairs. Some Realms in Heaven are so small that even angels don’t know about them. We can call them Sub-Realms. You know how there are people who buy private islands? Sub-Realms are kind of like that. They exist in a different kind of plane and are usually empty and up for grabs. That’s what the Vicar before Isaac did. It’s highly forbidden, though. He can access it and take us there anytime to find that flower.”
“Don’t you need one hundred percent purity to access Heaven?” Ugo asked. The time he had spent studying the supernatural was showing.
“I asked him, and Isaac said it was okay. It’s just a Sub-Realm. They work differently. Although, we’ll need supplements to raise our purity levels to prevent any unforeseen ailments and to keep our souls from being ejected from the close-to-Heavenly Realm.” Zeke approached AJ. “You need to go home and pack whatever you think will be necessary. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone. Isaac said to think of it as a camping trip.”
“What am I supposed to say to my parents?”
“Say, you’re going to a sleepover over the weekend.”
AJ’s expression scrunched, and she cocked her head to the side. “They would never believe that!”
“Just try something, AJ. We gotta go,” Zeke said. “We can’t waste any more time. I already let Isaac know that we’re in. We’ll exit the hospital together. You run home and enter the hospital from your bedroom. We’ll meet up in the waiting room.”
Zeke returned to the waiting room with his friends, enduring Eldora’s tormented laughter, alternating with dry coughs venting through the walls.
As soon as the trio used the door to transport back to Zeke’s and Ugo’s bedroom, AJ bolted out of the room. Zeke and Ugo ran to their wardrobes and pulled out large backpacks they used at LARP conventions. Zeke heard a door slam shut downstairs. AJ was on her way.
Zeke and Ugo picked up the pace, scrambled to their drawers, grabbed a couple of clothes, and stuffed them into their backpacks. Ugo slid over to their mini-fridge, gathered armfuls of water, energy drinks, and snacks, and dashed back to the backpack.
Zeke darted to the bathroom and collected toothbrushes, toothpaste, and a sealed soap box. He returned to the room and shoved it into the backpack. Ugo shuffled to the bedside and grabbed a tangle of cables, power banks, and portable gaming systems.
“Okay, Mora, finish up and go to the hospital with our stuff, okay?” Zeke said. “I need to wait for Isaac.”
“Why didn’t you just teach him the sigil?”
“I don’t want too many people knowing about it. Maybe just being in our group is good.”
Ugo sighed and nodded.
Zeke walked over to his desk, pulled a drawer, and grabbed a black marker. He shoved it into his pocket, stepped out of the room, stumbled down the stairs, and walked into the living room.
Zeke stood between the TV and furniture, browsing the family photo frames on the white shelves over the TV. He moved up to it and grabbed a photo of him and his mother at the beach ten years ago. It was long after she separated from Adelmo, and she was getting to know Gerardo. In the photo, he stood before her with her arms wrapped around his tiny shoulders.
She looked very healthy in the photo. A woman with a beautiful, contagious smile that’ll brighten the day of anyone who sees it, and they’d be compelled to smile back. Eldora Morata was a happy, caring woman who had to deal with all kinds of adversity the universe sent her way. Her parents clambered their way to the United States to ensure a wondrous life for their daughter, only for her to get caught up in an explosive, wretched marriage with a violent, money-hungry psychopath. Zeke realized he had never seen her panic or complain.
Suffering in silence was a bad habit of hers.
Funny, the complete opposite of him.
Zeke smiled as his eyes stung and welled with tears. Who knows how long she pushed down the will to laugh maniacally all day? How long had the curse really been in effect? How long had she been fighting the multitude of Euphorouses corroding her brain? Even when literal supernatural forces were causing her agony, she decided not to bother anybody with the details, but why? To look strong for him?
Zeke studied the photo punctiliously, engraving that wonderful image of Eldora Morata in his mind, just in case.
A door made a whine, and footsteps pattered across.
“Ezequias,” Gerard said with urgency.
Zeke put the photo back and turned around. “Apa!” he shouted and then forced out a chuckle. “How’re you doing?”
Gerardo studied Zeke and approached him slowly. “I come back from work and find the house empty. I don’t want to sound like a total Dad or anything, but you two weren’t answering your phones, and neither is your mother,” Gerardo said. “Where did you two go?”
“We were just hanging out with AJ.”
“Yeah, she isn’t home either, and her parents said that you guys didn’t pass by.”
Zeke was glad that somehow the universe made it possible for Gerardo not to run into AJ.
“We were just walking around, hanging out, right after school.”
The bearded dentist stared silently. “Right. Sorry, I get it,” Gerardo finally spoke and was a bit chagrined. “I just have a bad feeling really about your mother. Where’s Ugo now?”
“I dunno. Probably stalking somebody.”
“And your mom?” Gerardo’s chagrin left early, and now he was fixed on Zeke with a cold stare. The switch almost felt expertly performative.
“She went to Columbia,” Zeke spluttered.
Gerardo pulled back a bit. “What?”
“It was an emergency,” Zeke said. “That’s why she isn’t answering. She must be on the plane right now.”
“Why didn’t she say anything?”
“It was quick. She was all over the place and only had time to tell me.”
“Huh?” Gerardo shook his head. “How was she able to get tickets on such short notice?”
“Uh… uh… Colombians get special treatment?”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Gerardo said. He got closer to Zeke and captured his shoulder with a mighty grip. “Ezequias, what’s going on? Is this about her laughter? Is she okay? I knew I should’ve taken her to a brain scan! Is that it? Is she in the hospital right now and is embarrassed to tell me?”
Zeke’s eyes widened as a scapegoat was dropped right before him. “Yeah!” He tapped Gerardo’s arm and squirmed.
Gerardo released. “Really?” His expression grew sombre. He backstepped and fell onto the couch. “I’m a horrible husband. I should’ve helped her out much earlier, but all she would say is that ‘everything is okay.’”
Zeke looked to his side. He said, “Just sit tight and wait.”
Gerardo shot up. “No!” He closed his fists. “Tell me which hospital she went to, Ezequias. I’m going.”
“The…” Zeke’s eyes flew around the room.
“Ezequias, tell me!”
The door creaked open and hushed them at once.
Isaac emerged and sauntered into the living room, wearing a backpack. He scanned the room with a smile and then studied Zeke and Gerardo.
Gerardo glared back at Isaac. “Isaac, now is not a good time. Go home, Niño.”
Isaac held Gerardo’s steely glare as he unzipped a side pocket of his backpack.
“I said, ‘get out!’”
“Oh, I had a feeling something like this was going to happen…” Isaac pulled out a drawstring pouch.
Gerardo stormed toward Isaac. “I am going to need you to—”
“Sleep well, Mr. Morata,” Isaac interrupted and opened the pouch. He reached into it and slung a fistful of glittering dust at Gerardo. A golden cloud burst from Gerardo’s face, and he collapsed onto his back.
Zeke ran to Gerardo and looked down at him. He shot a glare at Isaac.
Isaac closed the pouch and raised it. “A special gift from the Anesthesiologist.” He put the pouch in Zeke’s hand. “From another one of the Tainted Generation, of course.”
“I see…”
“He promised me it’s more potent than Hypnos’ sand and any knock-out spell I could attempt.”
Zeke glanced at Gerardo spread out on the floor, heaving quiet, steady breaths.
“He’s fine, Hezekiah,” Isaac said casually, “there’s no need for him to know the truth, okay? It’s going to be taken care of. By the time he wakes up, he’ll be in bed with his wife by his side, all cured, thanks to us.”
“How long will he be out?”
“Until we wake him up with a spell.”
“So, you put him in a coma.”
“Yeah,” Isaac shrugged, “all his physical needs are frozen as well. He’ll be fine.”
Zeke groaned. There was no point in complaining. He had to deal with it. He pushed the pouch into his pocket. “Okay, but we’re not going to just leave him on the floor like this.” Zeke sat on his haunches. “You’ll have to help me take him to his bed.”
“Of course!”
“Then, I am going to have to elaborate more on why the angel cursed my mom.”
Isaac’s expression brightened. “Ooh?” he plundered to his haunches. “But before that, I feel I should inform you about something. You know those smiling angels you see at the cemetery and church?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s the last stage of the disease. There’s no use in trying to save them now. Their consciousness and souls are long gone by now.” Isaac put his hands together for a prayer. “With God’s guidance, we’ll save her, Hezekiah.”